Will Microsoft ever lose NA after this Gen?

[Mr Khan]

Rpruett said:

Certainly. The 360 isn't even doing 'THAT' well in North America despite numerous advantages that favor in the current landscape in North America. Xbox Live community, North America / WW headstart, Marketing , Pricing. The 360 has taken the role that the PS2 provided last generation, the solid staple gaming machine at a sweet spot in pricing with a compelling enough list of features and software. This is not some guaranteed position within the market. It just depends on the strategy that each company brings to the table.

That is the price range that children can have bought for them at Christmas or Birthdays or Black Friday shopping. This is the price range where new families, or young college age group can afford a cheap system as well.

This generation boiled down to pricing and hype. The Wii sold on price and hype for awhile. Once the hype died down for the Wii, a lot of the weaknesses it had came to the forefront. From that point and beyond it became a pricing war relative to features and software brought to the table.  PS3 has more features IMO but the price didn't justify that difference.

The PS3 has always just been too expensive for the casual NA gamer (To whom a majority of these consoles are sold) to justify when 90% of the libraries are identical and the graphics aren't even drastically different. So while the PS3 has rebounded and made a comeback, it completely missed the big casual boat this generation.


If Sony can position itself like they did with the Vita relative to the 3DS, you will see a very strong battle for North America between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. And If I were wagering between Microsoft and Sony specifically.
It's actually quite amazing that Sony is even in this discussion with the absurd $600 price tag releasing as late into the generation as they did.

This is a well thought out post on the matter. Microsoft, by both a mix of talent and luck, landed in the same sweet spot this generation as Sony did last generation, except that Nintendo pulled out of nowhere and changed up the market. Microsoft's dominance begins as Nintendo loses their way at the tail-end of the generation, but who knows who will have the magic of correct positioning next generation?

Victory in each generation is about being in the right place at the right time. Microsoft's dominance now is due to their ability to last through the generation as the main alternative to the Wii, and as Nintendo ditches Wii support, Microsoft profits. The PS2 was released at exactly the right time and under the right conditions to make its victory inevitable

In short, what Nintendo did with the Wii and DS is unprecedented in the industry's history: winning a market through a compelling first-party library, and one wonders if Nintendo has it in them to be able to do it again, and when that variable is removed, it all becomes about positioning again, something that Sony and Microsoft are good at, Nintendo less so (at this point they will dominate or sputter based on their first-party output)